One of the most annoying parts of my job is curating the adult faith library, established long ago with grandiose aspirations but which practically no one in the parish utilizes. In fact, in my five years at this parish, I’ve only had two interactions which involved the library, and I don’t think either person found what they needed. Book donations from parishioners have never stopped, though, and whenever I get a “book dump,” as I call them, I have to sift through what we will recycle and what we will keep and likely never read again.
Many of these books are junk; that’s often why they’re being cleaned out of our families’ home libraries. Every so often, though, there are some gems. The good books I’ll usually keep for the library - as intended - but occasionally I have set aside a book for someone in my religious education program who might like it, and just offered it to them. Maybe they’ll never read it, but maybe they will... and that’s more use than I can probably hope for it in our library.
Rarely, the treasures deposited outside my office door are items other than books. I’ve found a number of interesting bookmarks: inscribed holy cards from a century ago, a gold foiled Arabic word which, despite my best efforts, I was unable to Google Translate. People have deposited the occasional olive wood crucifix outside my office door along with their books, and there are often rosaries of varying quality.
At times, I have wondered what to do with the high quality items that have been donated to the parish. I feel like I should get them into other parishioners’ hands, but until recently struggled with how to do so fairly. How do you facilitate the transfer of beautiful reflections of our faith from a family which obviously has myriad to a family which has few?
To accomplish this end, I am planning a “rosary challenge” in my religious education program for this Lent. For each decade of the rosary prayed, the kids can put an entry towards a prize item of their choice. Great, inventory problem solved.
However… my planning is getting out of hand. Rather than simply redistributing the already-donated items, I’m buying a few Catholic items off Etsy that have amused or stuck with me, in order to ensure that there are some really good prizes.
Interior monologue:
“For what should motivate fifth grade boys to pray the rosary but the opportunity to enjoy perpetually a magnet which says - and shows - ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, punch the devil in the face’?”
“Surely someone will want this gorgeous Madonna of the Andes.”
Beads are coming from eBay so I can handcraft a rosary on the theme of Stella Maris. Like I said, out of hand.
The way I’ve spent my time on this illuminated for me that I’m basically acting as a Catholic interior designer for my PSR families. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem. I’ve ensured that a botanical illustration of the mysteries of the rosary got into the hands of our amateur (but very serious about it) botanist/retired priest. I ran across a beautiful illustration of Mary, Undoer of Knots, and passed it along to someone who had spent a while looking for one.
There seems to be a constant temptation to buying beautiful (or funny) pieces of art - not because I need to possess them, but because someone should.
But should someone else possess [insert art piece here]? Occasionally, my reflection tends toward how my own particular flavor of Catholicism developed from a conglomeration of those who have taught me.1 For example: St. Meinrad Archabbey, at which we stopped on our way to last week’s family vacation. St. Meinrad is important to me because of the impact it’s had on my faith and the faith of others when I was a kid. I went on pilgrimage there once with my dad and brother, as referenced in my first Restless Hearts post. Benedictines of the Archabbey heard my confession as a child and sealed me with the gift of the Spirit. I have a painting in my house of part of the St. Meinrad campus, which was painted by a family friend on retreat there. It’s inevitable that when I share the Catholic faith, it will flow from my experience, from what I enjoy, and from what resonates with me and the people who came before me. I’m likely to illustrate a catechetical concept with St. Meinrad.
As glorious as my particular Catholic tradition is,2 I don’t need to make Catholics in my own image. A few years ago, my husband’s cousin (who works in fashion) bought a hat for her nonagenarian grandmother, which said grandmother loved, and which was probably not something the cousin herself would wear.3 Bridget had worked as a personal shopper, and mentioned that when shopping for someone else, you have to think not about what you like but what they like.4 I think this is the perspective that not only personal shoppers but all gift-givers should cultivate.
I’m not offended if those I catechize don’t take to my devotional darlings as much as I do, although the energy with which I present them means they sometimes will. Maybe it will become more relevant later, or maybe there’s something out there in this big, wide Church which will mean as much to them, and I take pride if I can help them find it.
This year, I’ll put out prizes in this rosary challenge which are a reflection of what I think are valuable illustrations and tools of a Catholic home. I’ll see what gets the most votes, and about what people ask me “Where did that come from?”5 From there, I’ll reassess what items will move these people to prayer (both because they are drawn to the item itself, and because they quite literally have to pray to obtain it). Hopefully, at the end of Lent there will be several families with a little more tangible representation of their faith in their home - and may their faith grow in equal or greater measure. And I’m sure I’ll be really intense about finding something even more beautiful to offer next year.
1 I’m certain the sheer quantity of quotes from C.S. Lewis by various authors in this blog comes in part thanks to David Fagerberg at the University of Notre Dame.
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2 “tradition” with a lower case “t”, of course.↩
3 Dorothy passed away in June; eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord.↩
4 Moral concerns being neutral.↩
5 I’ll also see if, in the great tradition of catechesis, this idea is only really good in my eyes and in reality is a total failure to prayerfully motivate. Always a distinct possibility.↩
How many rosaries do I need to pray to earn that magnet intended for 5th graders?
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